


Reflections of Ourselves

by miss_grey



Category: Band of Brothers, The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Period-Typical Racism, probably gonna make you cry, reverse verse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2018-12-23 09:48:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11987319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_grey/pseuds/miss_grey
Summary: I just had a thought.  I wonder what the Band of Brothers boys and The Pacific boys would have turned out like if their circumstances had been reversed.  If Winters and Easy ended up fighting on small Pacific islands.  If Sledge and his crew had ended up invading Normandy.  I wonder.In answer to my own musings, I decided to start this series of drabbles in no particular order.  Lets see where it takes us.Comments are always welcome.





	1. Landsberg

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fiction and the characters herein are borrowed from the fictional portrayals in Band of Brothers and The Pacific and are not meant to be reflections on the real men. Absolutely no disrespect is intended.

 

 

It is Leckie, Runner, and Chuckler who first find the concentration camp at Landsberg.  It’s the smell that guides them, the sick scent of death and smoke hanging thick on the air, choking, smothering.  Desperation, fear, hopelessness, these things have no scent, but they were in the air as well nevertheless.

When they first saw the spindly, sickly men tottering toward the gates, they were confused at first, then shocked and horrified, having no words for what they were seeing.  They couldn’t even comprehend.  Such a thing had never existed before in their vocabularies. 

Runner fetched the others, and didn’t break down crying until his mission was complete and he stood in front of the fences once more.  He wasn’t the only one.  Sledge too, felt like all the goodness in the world was being wrenched out of him through his throat.  Felt the punch of inhumanity in his belly.

There were no words for it.  Even fewer for after.  When they were told that they couldn’t feed the people, that they’d have to lock the gates up once more and keep them there in that hell.

Orders were orders, of course.  But K Company had never before felt like they were betraying their own humanity in order to follow them.  There was no comfort after that.  No rationalizing anything.  No sympathizing with the enemy.  All memory of the German line singing Christmas carols in Bastogne was washed away by the reality of the darkest part of their capability.

Chuckler didn’t speak for days after, and the boys worried about him, but they didn’t have a whole lot to say about it either, and even though they feared for the permanent loss of his happy nature, they couldn’t seem to move themselves to do anything about it. 

Shelton was a bomb ready to go off from the moment he walked through the gates.  He held a sobbing man, too thin, too light in his arms, and there was no way he could contain that rage.  He passed out water and bits of bread and cheese for as long as he was able, never willing to stand the sight of someone so needing, so hungry, to utterly broken down and lost.  This was more than he’d ever seen, more than even his childish nightmares could summon.  Later that night, back at HQ, he exploded, smashing his fist into a wall, shaking plaster dust onto his shoulders and shuddering from the repressed rage.  There was too much of it.  Too much.  But he couldn’t let the others see.  Had to be strong for the men.  Sledge was the one to notice, and go tell Burgie, who patched him up without a word.

But Leckie.  There was no outlet for his rage.  There was nothing to help him, or them, or anyone else, except to keep going, keep marching, keep fighting, and never ever stop.  


	2. The Airborne

 

 

It was Sid who first told him about it, Sid who put the idea in his head.  It was a new way to fight a war, a new kind of soldier.  Eugene’s mother had scoffed when Sid mentioned it at dinner one night, when he said he’d intended to sign up and had his parents’ blessing.  “Why in the world would you want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane?” 

Sid had just laughed and said that there must be something to it, because the Airborne were supposed to be the best.

And that had been the beginning of the end, really.

Eugene had had to fight his father tooth and nail to be declared healthy enough to join up.  He’d gotten the silent treatment from his mother as well.  But, well, his brother had already joined the Marines and Eugene wanted to do his part too.  Only, he wanted to be the best.  Wanted to prove that he could be.  Wanted to prove that he wasn’t a sickly little boy anymore and that nothing so small as a murmur in his heart was going to hold him back from doing his absolute best for his country.

He might not make it, his father warned him.  All of his stubbornness and will still might not be enough.  There’s only so much a heart can take, after all.  Only so much a body can do.  Eugene had looked his father in the eye and replied “I’m going to fight with the Airborne, sir, or wash out trying to.”

 

 

Much later, Merriell Shelton would tell him that he’d joined for the extra $50 a month.


	3. Chosen

 

 

It didn’t make a lick of sense, Burgin thought to himself on more than one occasion.  He’d joined up with the army just after high school, after he and some buddies had taken their girls to see a picture and the news reel had come on, showing the fighting in Europe.  He’d known, as he’d known for a while at that point, that it was his duty and his destiny to serve his country in the best way that he could.  The recruiter had convinced him that the Airborne would suit him well.  Even his friends had told him that if anyone could do it, it’d be him.  And so he’d done it.  And he’d lain awake that night in his bed, imagining what that might be like.  Jumping out of planes behind enemy lines.  Fighting tooth and nail to defeat enemy forces.  Squeezing the trigger of a rifle with the sole intention to kill.  The Airborne were one of the most elite forces in the US military and Burgin felt humbled to begin his progress toward becoming a paratrooper.

Burgin was fast and smart and a good shot.  A really good shot, actually.  He’d figured there was no chance he’d ever be assigned as anything other than a rifleman.  That’s why it came as a shock.  Why it never did make a lick of sense.

All things considered, he had no idea why the US Army decided to make him a medic.

 

* * *

 

 

He knew in his heart that this would be his path when he joined up.  His grandmother had told him so, years ago when he was still a boy.  She’d grasped his hands in her own weathered ones and held on tight, caressing his palms.  “You have healin’ hands, cher.  Just like me.  Healin’ is in yo blood.”  Gene had thought about those words a million times, and could hear his grandmother’s voice even now.  He only prayed that she was right.  Prayed that it was true, that he could take the broken under his hands and cure them.  He was scared.  He’d be a fool not to be.  He had only a vague idea of where he might be going after he left California, itself a strange enough place far from his home.  Even then, though, he never thought the word would come to mean so much to him.  That someday it would haunt his dreams.  _Corpsman._ Just another word for what his grandmother always said he was meant to be.


	4. Hercules

 

 

“Outta the way!  Outta the way!”  Malarkey cried, shoving the boys aside just in front of a frantic Skip who rushed forward, arms extended as far from his body as he could get them.

“What in the unholy fuck is that?”  Guarnere sneered, backing up a step.

“What is it?”  Toye asked, sidling up next to him.

“What?  You all deaf?  Get out of the way!”  Malarkey shouted.

“What the fuck?  Seriously Skip, what the fuck?” Guarnere asked, horrified.

“Watch out guys!”  He half-shrieked, voice rising unusually high.  “Perco, flip the lid on that trunk, will ya?!”

“What trunk?”

“Oh shit, just fucking do it!”

Trunk opened, Skip deposited his burden and took a sweaty step back, to stand in the awe-struck, disgusted ring around the trunk with the other boys.  “Skip….” Luz drawled, arms crossed over his chest.  “Why is there a fucking land crab in Perco’s trunk?”

“Because his trunk was closest?”  He hedged, smiling up at the boys, though sweat beaded his forehead and stained his shirt.

“Really guys?!”  Perconte whined, watching as the monstrous little land crab started tearing through his one extra shirt and clean pairs of shorts.

Luz rolled his eyes.  “Come on.  Seriously.  Why’d you bring that thing in here?  You know they’re the ugliest things on earth.”

“Second to you!”  Guarnere called amid hoots of approval and a nudge from Toye.

“Look, they may be ugly, but still… wasn’t right, what they were doing.”  Skip mumbled, looking down at the pissed off crab that was now shredding Perconte’s shorts.

All eyes turned to him, but it was Malarkey, standing firmly at his side who answered.  “Some assholes over in Fox had a couple of crabs and were making ‘em fight each other to the death.  They were betting on it.”

“Goddamn animals.”  Skip mumbled.

“So you… what?  Saved this one?”

Skip stood just a little bit taller.  “That’s right.”

Malarkey snorted.  “Skip flung dirt in their eyes then stole the one he could get his hands on.  I accidentally dropped the other on the way back, but it scuttled away so I guess it’s alright.”

Inside the trunk, the crab had moved on to waving Perconte’s toothbrush in his oversized claw.

“So what are you gonna do with it?”  Penkala asked.

“Gonna keep him.  Named him Hercules already.  Look at that little fella go!”  Skip grinned.

“Really?”  Luz drawled.

“Yep.  Look, he’s a scrappy little bastard.  Deserves a second chance.”  He furrowed his brows.  “What do they eat, anyway?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care, but you better get a different trunk,” Perconte growled, “and you owe me a new goddamn toothbrush!”


	5. To Keep Them Safe

 

 

It was an ambush, the Japs swarming into the bombed-out, rocky hills with enough men to start picking them off like flies while their artillery kept them pinned down, with no clear path to retreat.  They were trapped, no way out.

The men were dropping left and right, casualties piling up faster than they could be fixed up or even reached.  The other corpsman, Spina, was doing his best slapping on tourniquets and sprinkling sulfa powder, but it wasn’t enough.  Not enough.  They didn’t even have plasma here.

Gene dragged them back from the line as far as they could retreat, to the only flat piece of ground he could find, half-shielded from the spray of machine gun fire that rained down on them.  It was all he could do, try to keep them safe here until reinforcements were able to break through and the injured could be medevacked out of there.

His brothers lay around him, soldiers he’d known and trained with since basic, and other faces, those of boys barely old enough to leave home, strained and bloody and covered in mud and dying, screaming for him and their mothers and God, their voices drowned out over the pounding of the guns and relentless shouting. 

Heffron was helping him by pulling another man to safety when it happened.  So fast.  No time to think, not really.  Gene’s eyes tracked the arc of the thing, all the way through the air, no stopping it, until it landed in front of him with a splat, in the middle of a dozen wounded men.   His brain was a frantic jumble of THEY’RE ALL GONNA DIE and PROTECT THEM, SAVE THEM, and GRENADE!!!

He ripped his helmet off and launched forward, throwing it over the grenade and curling his body around it.  Mid-air, he heard someone scream his name, but barely.  Then deafening silence.  One heartbeat.  Two.  Gene’s blood rushed in his ears, and he held his breath, held on tight, prayed that his body was enough to contain the blast.

Three heartbeats, four.  Nothing happened.

Gene sucked in a breath and curled tighter.

A moment later, hands pulled him away, hauled him shakily, dizzily to his feet.  He clung to the arms holding him up and watched, horrified, as one of the replacements came forward and carefully lifted the helmet, turning back to Gene and saying, strangely calm and inflectionless, “It’s a dud.”

Next to him, Babe nodded toward the grenade and growled “Get rid of it.”  After the private carefully scooped up the grenade and trotted away with it, Babe yanked Gene into a crushing hug, voice trembling when he said “Gene, you stupid son of a bitch, never again.  Never again.  We can’t lose you.”  Then, even softer, “Thank God you’re okay.”

But Gene couldn’t find any words at all to say, so he just clung to Babe for a moment, fingers clenched in his muddy jacket, and stared wide-eyed at the now-empty spot on the ground.


	6. Three Miles Up, Three Miles Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> K Company runs Currahee.

 

 

 

Looking back, the K Company boys, if asked, would say that the single most unifying factor during their months of intense training before Normandy was running Currahee.  They bitched and moaned and cursed its name.  But it did more than get them into shape.  It made them more than a company.  It made them a team.  Made them something like a family.  But they wouldn’t know that, of course, until much later.

 

* * *

 

 

“I hate running up that goddamn hill,” Merriell grumbled as he changed into his PT shorts. 

“Well, you’re not supposed to _like_ it,” Sid quipped from across the room.  “If we liked it, they wouldn’t make us do it.  Would defeat the point.”

“I don’t mind it that much, actually.”  Sledge mused as he pulled his shirt on over his head.

“Shut up, Sledge,” Merriell growled.  “Just because your fool self don’t have any self-preservation instincts.”

Eugene snorted.  “And you do?  Might I remind you that every single one of us signed up to jump out of airplanes?”

Merriell rolled his eyes and walked out of the barracks.  “Whatever, Gene.  Hurry yo’ ass up so you can run up that mountain you love so much.”

Eugene just grinned and followed after him.

 

* * *

 

 

It was fucking hot in Georgia, and never more noticeable than when the long line of men, running shoulder to shoulder, hauled ass up that formidable hill (mountain!) with their hair plastered to their foreheads, shirts stuck to their bodies, hot air filling their lungs offering no reprieve.

“Why do we do this, again?!” Bill Leyden shouted, to whoever might care to listen.

“You already know why, Bill,” Hoosier called back, “it’s so that we can be the fittest, sexiest sons of bitches in the whole ETO!”  He snorted.  “Though not even running Currahee every day can get the job done for some of you!”

“Shut the fuck up, Hoosier!”  Leyden snapped back, but with the hint of a smile pulling up the corner of his mouth.

“Nah, it’s not about that at all,” Leckie snarked from the edge of the column.  “It’s about training us to do things we don’t wanna do.  Run up a mountain with no water, jump out of an airplane, invade Europe….”

“Oh my God,” Runner groaned from right behind Leckie, rolling his eyes.  “Did you forget that you _signed up_ for this?!”

“Boys got time to bitch and moan?!” Sergeant Basilone shouted, suddenly appearing next to them, “Means you’re not running fast enough.  Let’s go!  Let’s go!”

From the back, Lt. Jones started laughing and sang out “Highty- tighty, Christ almighty, who the hell are we?”

And the men all answered back “Zim zam, goddamn, we’re Airborne Infantry!”


	7. Unlikely

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of a beautiful friendship.

 

 

The mess was a cacophony of silverware clatter, trays sliding and thumping, voices laughing and mumbling and bitching about the food.  Sledge had known from the start not to expect anything like what his mama made, but some days even he was impressed with how far the army stretched to name some of the things on the menu.  Still, it wasn’t in him to complain about the food he was given after a long hard day of training.  Today, they’d marched ten miles and then had tackled the course, and had a class on weapons care.  He was grateful simply for the reprieve and for the feeling of having a full stomach when he was through.

The mess was packed with soldiers when they got there, most having already pushed through the line and found seats at the tables lined up pristinely throughout the room.  Only a couple still had spots left.  One was nearly empty.

After Sledge and Sid got their trays, Sledge nudged his friend and motioned toward the nearly-empty table.  Sid shrugged and followed him.  There was only one other man at the table.  His dark, curly-haired head was bent over his tray and he ate slowly, methodically, without ever looking up.  Sledge cleared his throat on his approach.  “Mind if we sit here?”

Brilliant blue eyes glanced up, swiftly assessing, before the man shrugged a bony shoulder and went back to his food.  “I ain’t your keeper,” he drawled.

Sid shot Sledge a smirk and they both settled down near to the other man, across the table from each other.  He shoved a spoon full of mashed potatoes into his mouth, and barely swallowed before asking “Your mama send you a care package yet?”

Sledge darted a glance to the man next to them, then back to Sid when he ascertained that they weren’t being listened to.  “Yeah, but it was full of embarrassing things.  I don’t think she understands what might be practical.”

Sid laughed.  “At least she cares, Eugene.  She’s a good woman.”

Sledge sighed.  It was true.  She still tried to make him feel guilty about being here, though.  “What about you?”  He asked, trying to shift attention away from himself.  “Any packages for you?”

Sid smirked.  “Got a letter from Mary Houston.”

Sledge snorted.  “What in the world is she writing you for?”

“Said she was thinking about me.  Wants me to stay safe and make it back home alright.”

“Oh, Lord.”  Sledge rolled his eyes.  He stabbed what looked like it was supposed to be chicken.

“I think I’m gonna keep writing her.”

“Well of course you are,” Sledge replied after he confirmed that yes, it was indeed chicken.  “She’s too good for you, ya know?”

“Oh, I know it,” Sid grinned.  “Not gonna tell her that, though.”

Sledge laughed.  “Probably wise.”  He poked something that might have been pudding.  “You try this yet?”

Sid shrugged.  “It’s alright.”

Next to them, the dark haired man sighed and looked up.  “The two ‘a you always gab on like this?”

Sledge, offended, opened his mouth to respond, but Sid, who was smirking, beat him to the punch.  “It’s Eugene here, ya know.  Very dramatic.”  He stretched his hand across the table.  “Sid Phillips.”

The dark haired man eyed the proffered hand for a moment before taking it rather reluctantly.  “Shelton.”  He turned his eye to Sledge then.  “So you must be Eugene.”

“Sledge.”

“Uh huh.”  No handshake was offered this time around.

“You’re in K Company too, right?”  Sledge tried, even more offended now that his introduction hadn’t even warranted a handshake.

“That’s right,” Shelton drawled.

“I guess we’ll be seeing each other around, then.”  Sledge added, still trying to pursue a decent conversation.

“’Suppose we will.”  With that, Shelton grabbed his tray and left the table, without looking back.

As soon as he was out of earshot, Sid snickered.  “Look at you, Eugene.  Making new friends already.”

Sledge watched Shelton stride away, his posture strangely lax.  He sighed.  “Unlikely.”

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos are appreciated but comments are love and give me life. Also, feel free to come stalk my tumblr here:   
> http://realhunterswearplaid.tumblr.com/


End file.
